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11.11.2008 - 14:59
Remembrance Day
So today is Remembrance Day. This also means that for most of the country, its a holiday, though where I grew up it wasn't. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that.
When I was little, we would always have a minute of silence in class at 11 o'clock. As I've gotten older, I've heard its supposed to be 2 (or 3) minutes, but I'm guessing that are teachers (rightly) knew that 6 year olds do not have the attention span for more than a minute of silence.
We would talk about the war, and how Remembrance Day marks the end of World War I. I didn't know anything about World War I, except that it came before World War II, and both of my grandfathers were veterans of World War II. So anyone who was in World War I must be really old, or dead, since my grandpas were older than I could ever imagine being when I was 6.
During the minute of silence, I knew I was supposed to remember those that fell in the war(s). But when you're 6, how do you do that? I didn't know anyone that had died in the war, because if they had died, I never met them. So I thought about my grandpas that had survived the war, or at least the one grandpa I could remember (the other died when I was 1). But since they were both pilots, I figured that was close. This one was a fighter pilot, he had flown spitfires. I didn't know what a spitfire was, but I knew that Snoopy fought the Red Baron, while pretending his doghouse was a plane, so I figured that being a fighter pilot must have been something like that. I also tried to imagine war in my head for that minute. It ran kind of like war scenes from movies, only without a hero, because what else do you know of war when you are 6 and living in Southern Ontario? There was always lots of running, yelling, guns and mud. And the occasional bomb, so I didn't get bored during that long minute. And poppies. I thought about poppies. Because that's the symbol for Remembrance Day.
When I got older I found out I did know someone that died in the war, or at least as much as anyone 'knows' someone that died 30 years before they were born. My great aunt had been betrothed to a man before he left for World War II. He never returned from that war, and she never married as a result. "I'm a one-man woman" she says, and at 86 I guess its as true as it ever could be. She never strayed from her first love. She had a moonstone he gave her in a safety deposit box somewhere. I am proud of her commitment to someone who has been gone for so long, as much as I am sad that she never found love again. But somehow it makes his sacrifice more... real? honest? true? They say we should never forget, and she never has. So these days I also think about her, and how war changed the path of her life more than anyone else I know.
My grandfather died on Dec 5th. I know because I was in exams at university, and I had to defer them. At the funeral the members of the Legion pinned poppies on his casket. I remember seeing all of the red poppies on the white satin, but I don't remember them pinning them there. I think there have been a private legion ceremony, or it was done before I arrived. Its hard to say, it was a pretty tough day and I had to give the eulogy, so its not really a surprise I have lost some of the details. I do remember that my mom took pictures for my brother, who was living in Vancouver and couldn't afford the flight home for the funeral. She was secretive about it, because she didn't want anyone to think she was weird or disrespectful of her father, but needed to make sure that her oldest son was there in some way. Because of all of the poppies, the memories of that day are freshest on Remembrance Day.
Today on the bus, the bus driver announced the 11th hour, and asked for 2 minutes of silence. One man took his hat off, but another never stopped talking. In his defense, the driver was hard to understand at the back of the bus, and it was only because I was waiting for it that I knew what he said. While I sat there, watching the streets go by, these are the things I thought about.
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